Since the arrival of XBOX LiveArcade and PSN the gaming world have seen a massive influx of new games that entertain and deliver a style of gaming that new age gamers (As in younger gamers not gamers who hang out in camper vans covered in flowers.) may not be used to. For this reason much of the gaming press underrate and overlook some of these fantastically original games. These are games that reignite genres that so many of us grew up on.

This is why at G4A we go out of our way not to directly compare XBLAand PSN titles to full price retail releases. Why? We feel that these titles should stand completely separate. Though the online download market is itself evolving and expanding with releases such as the Alien Breed Trilogy and also titles like Hydrophobia bringing ever more impressive technical achievements to the online table.

Then there are the genres we thought were dead. The re-release of Sonic The Hedgehog brings a titillating classic side scrolling platformer back to our screens, a game that some perhaps have only ever played the 3D version of. This rebirth or continuation of genres ensures that classics are still played they were intended all them years ago. Bomberman, Pac-Man and the slightly adapted Space Invaders (Adapted to be seizure inducing.) have all been given a modern slant and brought to the public on a medium that would otherwise not be there.

The retail games that you would find in Game Stores (Buy high, get bugger all back when you trade!) are more rated on graphical ability, how long it takes to get from one edge of the map to the other and how many hours a game takes to complete. Even here the value for money doesn’t always add up. As far as G4A are concerned we ‘Flip the bird to you’, even when you play for an average of ten hours these games rarely lend themselves to repeat play. Titles like Bomberman will have you and your mates playing for years.

As such, we at G4A ask the question of why the gaming media see these games as 2nd class citizens. Why is there no official chart for PSN and XBLA games? We feel that the games available deserve much more credit than what is seen and in the future hope to see a chart created for them. (Surely tracking these sales is easier than that of the full price games as they are all sold from just two places.) We also would like to see these games rated on their own merits, you cannot compare Alien Breed with Halo 3 simply because they both featurealiens and guns, but that should not take away from the fact that Team 17?s series is excellent also.

2010was a good year for both online downloads and full price retail releases. We saw titles such as Bio Shock 2, Mass Effect 2 and Rockstar’s cowboy adventure Red Dead Redemption. The online downloads also saw titles like Blade Kitten, Monkey Island SE and Worms: Armageddon.

Many of these download titles represent a bygone era of instant gratification and a feeling we would get from arcades with 10p’s. It was a pick up and put down 10 minute gaming fix and that should not be underestimated. This is gaming undiluted with no pretence and with one thing and one thing only on the menu… Fun!